The curse has been lifted

The curse of the kitchen disasters, you know. It left as suddenly as it came, leaving behind a veritable feast of yummiliciousness (oooh, Crystal made up a word!).

I'm not sure why it decided to visit my home, nor do I know why it chose to go, but let me tell you I am sure glad that it did. Perhaps it left with my cold, or perhaps my little emo dog chased it away with her sad, sad eyes. Or maybe... just maybe... it was banished into the night with the arrival of the newest member of our household.




Meet my new favorite family member, Miss KitchenAid Mixer.




Aint she a beaut? Her baby sister, Li'l Immersion Blender is sitting next to her. I've been wanting to welcome Miss Mixer into my home for quite some time now and after months and months of agonizing over the decision I went for it. I bought the souped up model with the all metal gears and the huge bowl and the powerful motor. This baby has some power, people. I was originally not going to spring for that one, but I found it for a crazy low price and with a rebate to boot and I carefully measured the tiny spot on my counter to make sure it would fit... and, well, obviously it does. Barely. *grin*

When I ordered her, I had visions of bread loaves and cookies and brownies dancing in my head. I'm hopefully going to be a mom someday, and moms bake, you know. They do not, however, kill off half of their state by making nu-cu-ler pastries. But I have these grand dreams of me and Miss Mixer creating all sorts of yummilicious items full of genetically-modified-wheat and white sugar and pounds and pounds of luscious butter. Someone's gotta fatten me up (seriously... lost toooo much weight this winter!). Do you think she's up to the task?

I'm thinking of buying her a few friends to play with. Mr. Grain Mill and Mrs. Pasta Maker. Maaaaaybe if my husband is nice enough to me, I'll consider having his buddy, Mr. Ice Cream Maker Dude, over for a few meals. But for now, it's just me and Miss Mixer. But oh, what a wonderful pair we are.

We have already made pizza (with a chickpea crust):



And peanut butter cookies.... MMmmmmm!




That was Saturday. Sunday she really got a workout by mixing up some yummy doughy, yeasty goodness.



Oh yes. Bread. FRESH bread. Like, two loaves of BREAD. Made with yeast and white flour and white sugar. Kneaded and risen to perfection. *happy sigh* Can you even believe it?!



And it.is.gooood.y'all.



See? The first loaf is already half gone.

I can definitely say that Miss Mixer was broken into quite nicely this weekend. And my mind is going nuts trying to decide what to bake next! You know you like your new mixer when you look at the huge batch of cookies on the table and find yourself wanting to binge on them just so that you will have a good excuse to make brownies.

Who has issues? Not me. I just have a yummiliciousness-inducing new toy. Oh, and the absence of the kitchen curse, of course.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

People, I hereby declare myself dangerous in the kitchen. Remember the nu-cu-ler bread I made on Wednesday? Oh yeah. It gets worse.

Friday afternoon, I decided I REALLY wanted cookies. These cookies, to be specific, though I do not know why the person who posted them said to use instant oats. I've been eating these my entire life, and I'm pretty sure I've always had them with quick oats. At least that is what mama tells me to buy when I frantically call her from the grocery store to ask which kind I need. QUICK oats. Not old fashioned. Not instant. Instant oats are, like, ewwwe, but I digress.

At first I thought I did not have enough sugar, but it turns out that I had just enough. Whew. All was well. I carefully measured out my ingredients, paying extra attention this time (even though I did not use the confusing measuring cups - I desperately wanted these cookies and did not want to mess them up!). I used the special dark cocoa... mmmmmm... and threw in a dash of salt, just like mama taught me. Chocolate desserts need a dash of salt. Sometimes we make these with peanut butter and sometimes we leave it out. This time, however, the peanut butter was a-callin' my name. It has calories, you know, and I need calories. Plus, I haven't yet tasted them with special dark cocoa and peanut butter.

I set out my pot with the ingredients and got it going. Maybe 45 seconds later, I looked over and saw a measuring glass... with 1/2 cup milk. *sigh* I forgot to pour in the milk. Things seemed ok, so I poured it in. It immediately started to simmer. Hmm. I stirred vigorously and 30 seconds later, the bottom felt as though it had sticky stuff on it. By the time the mixture came up to a boil, it stunk to high heaven. Don't you love the smell of burnt sugar AND burnt chocolate? Oh yes, it is a lovely combo for sure.

I ruined the stinking (literally) cookies! I could not believe it. I've made these for years and years and have never made such a mistake.

Of course, I used up the last of the sugar so I could not make another batch. *grumble, grumble* And do you know how nicely burnt sugar and cocoa sticks to the bottom of a stainless steel pan? I think the three became one. It took several boiling soaks to get it off (ever boiled water with baking soda? That's kind of fun.). Here's how it looked after a few soaks and scrapes:


It did finally come clean. That's why I love stainless so... it can take a lot of abuse! Of course, the story does not end here. Nope, not quite. During my attempt to cause the pan and the burnt sugar/cocoa to get a divorce, something else happened.


Yep. To add insult to injury, I melted the end of my measuring cup.

I'm a GOOD COOK. I promise, I really am. Ask my husband and my daddy. Sure I set a pan on fire when cooking our second wedding anniversary dinner, forcing us to eat at Burger King for the memorable event instead... but that doesn't count. Nor does the fact that I coated the entire kitchen with a fine layer of fire extinguisher shmudge to put it out (it was only the pan that was on fire, people. Just.The.Pan). And let's not count the time I somehow made oatmeal so salty that my husband nearly gagged. No, no. These do not matter. They were a loooong time ago. I make good food these days, and I promise I have not experimented with the pyrotechnics in 5.5 years. But last week, the kitchen did not treat me well. Blame it on the tax man. Or the migraine and fever I've been fighting for the past two days. Yes, one of them has to be to blame... not me.

But just to be safe, I think I might hire a cook from now on.

My house is nu-cu-ler

I titled this post just to annoy my husband, who cringes every time he hears someone say "nu-cu-ler" instead of nuclear. It absolutely drives him batty. *grin*

Last night, this dear nu-cu-ler man of mine came home with a ton of chocolate. I asked him to stop in Walgreen's on the way home to pick up some coke (which they were OUT OF... THE NERVE!!! I'm down to one can of coke. This is dangerous territory, people.) and a little chocolate, and he came home with an entire shopping bag full of chocolate. I'm telling you, this man gets me. He brought some dark chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds, some 1/2 off easter candy, and *happy sigh* a bar of Lindt Intense Orange. He said, "See? I read your blog." Well, I read his blog too, so does that mean I should bring home a pink jeep for him?

"That's nice, Crystal, but why is your house nu-cu-ler?" you ask.

Well, see, this week has been very interesting and crazy and between all that stuff and all the tax stuff, my brain has been a weeeee bit scattered. Last night I had a craving for some freshly baked bread with butter and creamy, raw honey (GET SOME, I'm telling you. It's like semi-solid-semi-liquid gold.) only I didn't want to knead and wait hours for bread to rise, so I headed over to one of my favorite food blogs (which is a new addiction of mine. Really. I hog them in my Bloglines and stay up until wee hours of the night reading them, fantasizing about cooking - which I hate - all the food that I will never eat. I don't have issues. I really don't.) and printed out a recipe for whole wheat Irish soda bread. Soda bread is made with baking soda (here is where you say "duuuuuh, Crystal") instead of yeast.

The recipe seemed easy enough, so I went to work. The recipe stated that it would make 2-3 servings, so I originally planned on doubling it. However I forgot, so that didn't happen (which is good, because it really turned out to be 5-6 servings at the least). I measured out my dry ingredients and mixed them all up. I got out my new immersion blender and whipped up some milk (powdered rice milk is a life saver when you haven't been to the grocery store in a week and a half) and was about to pour it in. It was at that moment that I re-examined the recipe and realized that I pulled out the baking powder instead of baking soda. I almost decided to throw in the baking soda anyway, but was afraid that would make things worse so I just left it alone.

I poured in the milk and started to mix. The dough was really wet. I mean, re-al-ly wet. Hmm. Ok. I know it's humid here and that can mess with dough, but it ain't THAT humid. This is when, dear bloggy friends, I saw that I had been using an 1/8 cup measuring cup when I thought it was 1/4 cup. Who does that? Me. These are odd shaped measuring cups and appear to hold much more than they really do, so I easily get confused when I don't actually read the labels on them, and who needs to read labels when cooking? Totally unnecessary. I don't have time for that. I have a business to run!

I dumped in the other half of the flour that should have been there already and mixed some more. I formed the loaf and gently placed it on the cooking sheet and stuck it in the oven with the timer set to 35 mins, as instructed by the recipe. 35 minutes later, bread is not browned yet, so I stuck it back in and set the timer for 10 minutes more.

10 minutes later, bread is STILL not browned. I grabbed my pot holder and pulled out my oven thermometer. "325 degrees! What in the world? It should be 425, not 325. My oven is broken!! No wonder the bread won't cook!" It was at THIS point that I looked at my oven dial and realized I set it 100 degrees too low.

I kicked up the heat and cooked it for another 15-20 minutes or so and pulled it out. It browned nicely, finally, and cooked through, but it took on a funny shape and this weird shape was not unlike that of a mushroom cloud. Now I'm no scientist, but by my calculations, the entire lower half of Texas should be dead by now. Anyone watch the news today?

It was a little crunchy on the outside, but butter and raw honey heals all. Even nu-cu-ler kitchen disasters.

I was going to bake cookies today, but with my continuing scatter-brain episode, I figured I better not or CTU will be beating down my door to confiscate the evidence and high-tail my butt over to Guantanimo.

Although meeting Jack Bauer would be cool.

Stuff on my fridge

Heidi tagged the entire planet to show the world what's on their fridges. Mine is boring, but why not?

First of all, I don't like things on my fridge. That bothers me. I will not be a kid artwork fridge mom. Sorry, I just won't! I'll put up a bulletin board or something for that somewhere.

Here is the front:

Seeee? Nice and bare.

The side:


It's not much, but I don't even like THAT stuff on my fridge. There is a shopping list and pen:


(I need rice, water, and coke. Yes, I buy my water. Yes, I drink coke. I need the extra calories right now. Yes, my handwriting is REALLY that bad.)

There are three magnets. The two flower ones I bought from someone on Etsy. She's nice and I wanted to buy something from her. I have no where else to put magnets. There are also two toy things that belong to my husband. They were Christmas gifts to him. They're magnet things. I don't know... they're magnets, you play with them, and build statues, solve world hunger... something. They're his though and are supposed to be in his office at work, but he keeps forgetting to take them there. So they're on my fridge.



Oh look! Fingerprints on my fridge. (They are now gone, thank you very much.)


On top of my fridge, you will find six boxes of cereal, two containers of rice protein (chocolate and vanilla), a crockpot, a package of paper towels, and BBQ tools. Don't get me started on the stuff on top of my fridge! I do not like that there either, but I don't have enough storage in my kitchen.




If you're wondering what's inside my fridge, well, there are leftovers from tonight's meal... spaghetti squash with marinara sauce and green beans.


No coke, though, because I'M OUT.

I won't bother tagging anyone because last time I tagged, no one did it. So if you want to play, go ahead and have fun!